Bowling is pronounced ‘boring’ in Japanese

Today, I stumbled across this odd photo of a “gutter pin” from a huge bowling center in Yokohama* that is being torn down.
gutter pin Yokohama

One of the oddities of Japan is that almost all bowling alleys here have the same giant 5-meter bowling pin made of fiberglass mounted on their roofs.

bowling-pin-building
For some mysterious reason, these massive bowling pins never fall off during typhoons even when the building it is mounted on is severely damaged (too bad Japanese buildings are not created with the same quality as these advertising objects).

*Here‘s an urban exploration video of ruins of the “gutter pin” building taken last year.

Odd EngRish factoid:
If you look up the Japanese translation for “bowling,” you will find it has the almost the same pronunciation as “boring”—Most Japanese cannot distinguish or say either word correctly. This results in all sorts of fun confusion when Japanese people ask an English speaker anything about bowling or ask gaijin/foreigners to join them.
bowling vs boring  in Japanese

And of course, bowling and boring are not to be confused with Japanese department store bimbos’ bowing
japanese dept store girl bowing
Click for full size photo, 500×666.

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Taro

I'm a pale, alien, quadruped who has worked for 25+ years at "Maybe-the-Largest Inc." in Tokyo.

5 thoughts on “Bowling is pronounced ‘boring’ in Japanese”

  1. He-e-ello?
    You forgot this Japanese Toyota “bowling” video.

    [video deleted]

  2. Sorry Miss “Button Nose”, but the WordPress software deletes video and images from the rif-raff. ;-)

    “Button Nose” wrote:
    He-e-ello?
    You forgot this Japanese Toyota “bowling” video.

  3. Could you please help me out here. I am interested in the last point about sex with wombats but really I am not sure about it. Could someone please explain it a little more to me, a Comment Spammer?

  4. Wow, that’s an incredible bow. I just hope I’m always behind her when she’s doing it.

  5. Not boring bowling in Japan…


    Besides boars that selfishly bowl without considering the safety of nearby monkeys there are several other bowling Bandai animals including:

    Bowling Bandai Rhino!

    bowking-rihno
    bowling-rhino_box

    Bowling Bandai Bison!
    bison

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